“The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment.”

“It is not the real punishment. The only effectual one, the only deterrent and softening one, lies in the recognition of sin by conscience.”

“Anyone who can appease a man's conscience can take his freedom away from him.”

“Yes, Lise. You see, your question whether we do not despise that unhappy man by dissecting his soul was the question of a person who has suffered a lot. I'm afraid I don't know how to put it properly, but a person to whom such questions occur is himself capable of suffering.”

“Often a man endures for several years, submits and suffers the cruellest punishments, and then suddenly breaks out over some minute trifle, almost nothing at all.”

“After all, man may be fond not only ofwell-being. Perhaps he is just as fond of suffering? Perhaps suffering is just as much in his interest as well-being?”

“I once saw a convict who had been twenty years in prison and was being released take leave of his fellow prisoners. There were men who remembered his first coming into prison, when he was young, careless, heedless of his crime and his punishment. He went out a grey-headed, elderly man, with a sad sullen face. He walked in silence through our six barrack-rooms. As he entered each room he prayed to the ikons, and then bowing low to his fellow prisoners he asked them not to remember evil against him.”